Ridgemonkey Great Escape - Lessons from Lake Zabar!

Fishing wild venues in Europe like Lake Zabar which have an abundance of underwater features and cover, combined with big carp averaging over 50lb, strong reliable kit is required, that will not let you down in the heat of battle. Therefore, you will need carp rods with a strong back bone, to help steer large carp from snags, so a minimum 3.5lb test curve is recommended. 

Rig wise, the fish on these large, wild waters are not as cute as the heavily pressured carp in the UK, so keep your rigs simple with strong components throughout. The team at Ridgemonkey all used Size 4 Ape-X Medium Curve Hooks tied to either 35lb Camo X Soft Braided Fishing Line or 20lb Spectre Fluorocarbon Fishing Line. 

When fishing large venues, even when there is a high stock of fish present, there will be several areas of the lake that will be devoid of fish, so always make sure you keep your eyes open and watch for signs of fish moving such as fish crashing or bubbles/murky water.

Although, a lot of venues abroad you have to book swims prior to your arrival, when there make sure you take a lap of the lake before you start fishing, so you can earmark any potential spots that you may want to move into, if your original spot is not producing fish after the first couple of days, follow the fish. This was perfectly highlighted by Loz who after moving after a biteless 3 days, was straight into some of Lake Zabar's carp including a new PB of 55lb. 

A common feeding pattern for carp anglers fishing Europe is to use a bait boat and deposit massive amounts of bait in a specific area to draw and hold carp in the peg. On some venues, this is an absolute winner, but the Ridgemonkey team quickly found that the Lake Zabar carp were steering clear of these heavily baited areas, with most bites coming on rigs cast off the back of the feed area.

Therefore, a change of feeding, where they fished their rigs over only a small scattering of 5-10 boilies, to avoid the fed area looking like a trap to the carp, instantly transformed their swims. 

For most carp anglers, fishing in Europe offers the chance to catch carp of a size that are much larger then anything in the UK, but even though lakes such as Zabar are full of big carp, they are also full of smaller carp and other species such as bream and carassio, which can easily pick up smaller hookbaits.

Therefore, fishing larger hookbaits is a must to ensure your rig is in position when a monster carp enters the swim. The Ridgemonkey team found that fishing double 18mm boilies or even double 22mm boilie hookbaits ensured that every bite resulted in carp within the 50lb mark! 

With so many nuisance fish in Lake Zabar, although the team initially went with the plan of feeding a mixture of different size particles such as sweetcorn, crushed boilies and pellets as well as boilies, they soon found that this brought too many small fish into the peg.

Therefore, by changing to a boilie only approach, feeding only larger boilies of 18mm, 22mm and 26mm in size, this eliminated the small fish problems, whilst ensuring the feed will remain in place on the bottom for long enough for any bigger carp to find on their patrol routes. The team also decided to feed shelf life boilies over freezer baits, as these were harder again, minimising the chance of smaller fish being able to pick at the bait.  

As a result of the team at Ridgemonkey finding that the carp seemed to be shying away from larger feed areas, they were met with a conundrum where they needed to be feeding a bait that the fish would define as safe, but would also offer enough pulling power to attract fish to feed on the safe bait.

Therefore, they found that firstly selecting a fish flavoured bait such as Mainline ISO Fish, offered more potency then sweet flavoured boilies, and to make the bait appear safe, they found that submerging the boilies in lake water, made them softer and paler/faded in colour, but by adding both glug and liquid flavours such as the Mainline Smart Liquid, they were able to activate the boilies, ensuring the boilies still offer plenty of pulling power when in the swim. 

No matter the venue, whether it be in the UK or Abroad, there is always a time in the day where carp will feed more confidently and by fishing to these times, you can make sure that your rigs are in place at that key moment where you are most likely to get a bite. Also, by knowing this time, you can also introduce feed when you are least likely to get a bite without risking of spooking fish by putting a bait boat or spod over them.

In Europe, due to the high daytime temperatures, the carp on a lot of venues feed most confidently at night, and this was the case at Lake Zabar, with 90% of the bites coming between 10:30pm and 07:30am, so the team at Ridgemonkey geared their day around this time, making sure all spots were primed ready for any arrivals.